It's a moment that we've seen many times before: the president and his staff overseeing a tense military operation, intently focused on a satellite link to some distant country.

But this time there was a notable difference.

While similar images from Obama's time show staff with laptops and snarled cables, photos from Thursday's Syria strike show Trump's team with just a single monitor and a mysterious array of linked boxes.

Boxing clever: Donald Trump's war room team are seen on Thursday during the Syria air strikes. But exactly what the white boxes on the table are has been the subject of debate

Laptop dogs: During Obama's Bin Laden situation room, the table was laden with laptops. Not so this time. Experts believe that the boxes were likely secure, custom-built telecoms devices

What are those boxes? It's a question that is baffling even ex-White House tech experts, Vice's Motherboard reported.

'On the far left you can see a monitor/screen with a camera on top, so that's part of a secure video conference,' said Tommy Vietor, formerly Obama's National Security Spokesman.

However, the black-and-white boxes were unknown to him.

'The one in front of Reince looks like there are maybe cable inputs or a headphone jack but I don't know,' he said.

'They could be little displays, or maybe just receivers to pick up audio?'

He added that if they were performing a video teleconference with the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he 'would strongly suspect' that the technology was secure White House communications equipment.

Brian Roemmele, founder of credit card terminal company 1st American Card Service, said that the boxes were unique to the White House.

He tweeted that the black box visible in front of the TV was 'a Cisco TelePresence Touch 8' while the white boxes were 'custom participant interfaces.'

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Like Vieto and Roemmele, Justin Iovine, a presentation service technician at VICE's Brooklyn offices, agreed that the white boxes were custom-made receivers.

He added that 'They are most likely using a codec [data encoding device] for the telepresence,' in order to get 'one-to-one communication, or multiple secure controlled connections.'

Concerns about security at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate were sparked in February, when photos showed the president and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe discussing North Korean missile tests in a public dining room.

One member of the public even took a photo with a man they claimed was responsible for carrying America's nuclear football.

But Vieto said that 'while Trump's staff is incompetent, the White House Communications Agency are bada** and professional.'